DocketEye — watch the dockets for the companies you own

How a default judgment actually happens

Three steps, none of which require you to have done anything wrong

1

An address was filed once, at formation

Under LLC Law §303 and BCL §306, the Secretary of State is the agent for service on every New York LLC, and the state forwards process to the address on file. For a lot of companies that is a lawyer's old office, a first apartment, or a formation service that has since been cancelled.

2

Someone sues. Albany is served, and mails it on

The plaintiff does not have to find you. Serving the Secretary of State is service on the company. The state mails the papers to the address on file, and that is the end of the plaintiff's obligation.

3

The letter does not arrive. The case runs anyway

Service is legally complete on mailing, not on receipt. The answer period runs, a default is taken, and a judgment is entered. Owners typically find out when a bank account is restrained or a title search turns up a lien.

New Jersey works the same way, with less warning

Service is by mail to the registered office — the same address whose failure caused the problem — and it completes at the earliest of receipt, return receipt, or five days after the papers are deposited with USPS. N.J.S.A. 42:2C-89 also means New Jersey cannot send an electronic notice of service the way New York now can: the LLC Act does not authorise electronic delivery of court pleadings.

The cheapest fix has nothing to do with us

If the address the state holds is wrong, correcting it is a Certificate of Change filed with the Department of State, $30. Reading your address back to you is free here and stays free — it needs no court data at all. What to do about anything you find is a question for an attorney; DocketEye does not give legal advice and is not a registered agent.

What DocketEye does

Two jobs, and we will tell you the limits of both

1 · Read back the address the state holds

You add a company by picking it out of the state's own register — by its state ID, not by typing a name. We then show you the service-of-process address New York has on file and compare it with the address where mail actually reaches you. This uses no court data, costs us one free lookup, and you can re-run it yourself from your dashboard whenever you want, for as long as you have an account.

Limit: New Jersey's free business search does not publish the registered agent address, so this check is New York only today.

2 · Watch the court sources listed below

We compare the names your companies are registered under — including trade names and former names you add — against new filings from the sources in the table below. When a filing names one of your companies you get an email with the court, the docket number, the caption, the filing date and a link to the docket.

Limit: an uncertain name match is held for a person to look at before anything is sent, and that takes as long as it takes. We would rather be slower than wrong about whose company was sued.

An alert carries the court, the docket, the caption, the filing date, a link, and a line telling you to consult an attorney. It never contains a deadline, a calculation of one, or advice about what to do — working out what a filing means for you is practising law, and we do not.

Coverage

What we watch, court by court

This is the whole list. A source that is not in the table below is not being read, and the second table says so by name. We do not describe this product as watching "New York" — that word covers courts nobody publishes.

Source	State	What it covers	What it does not see	Runs
S.D.N.Y. U.S. District Court	NY	Civil cases filed in the Southern District of New York, from the court's own public docket feed.	The feed carries the case caption. Most complaint captions name only the first party on each side: in a one-day sample of S.D.N.Y. filings, 25 of 34 ended in "et al". A company named as a later defendant may not appear in the caption we read.	configured hourly
E.D.N.Y. U.S. District Court	NY	Civil cases filed in the Eastern District of New York.	Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y.	configured hourly
N.D.N.Y. U.S. District Court	NY	Civil cases filed in the Northern District of New York.	Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y.	configured hourly
S.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy	NY	Bankruptcy cases filed in the Southern District of New York. Feed titles are debtor names rather than truncated captions.	Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title.	configured hourly
E.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy	NY	Bankruptcy cases filed in the Eastern District of New York.	Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title.	configured hourly
N.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy	NY	Bankruptcy cases filed in the Northern District of New York.	Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title.	configured hourly
W.D.N.Y. Bankruptcy	NY	Bankruptcy cases filed in the Western District of New York.	Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title. The district court for the same region publishes no feed at all — see below.	configured hourly
D.N.J. U.S. District Court	NJ	Civil cases filed in the District of New Jersey.	Same caption limitation as S.D.N.Y.	configured hourly
D.N.J. Bankruptcy	NJ	Bankruptcy cases filed in the District of New Jersey.	Creditors and co-debtors named later in a case are not in the feed title.	configured hourly
New York entity change filings	NY	Filings the Department of State records against your entity, including a change of the address it mails lawsuits to, resignation of a registered agent, and dissolution by proclamation.	Records paperwork filed with the Department of State. It is not a court record and does not show lawsuits.	configured daily
New York State tax warrants	NY	Tax warrants docketed by the State of New York. A warrant is already a docketed judgment with a lien attached.	Centralised filing began 1 July 2025; warrants docketed in a county before that date are not in this source. Filings appear one to five days after docketing.	not running yet
New York City agency judgments	NY	Judgments docketed by New York City agencies against a named respondent.	City agency matters only. It is not a court docket.	not running yet
New York Supreme Court, new cases	NY	New civil cases filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, county by county — 61 counties.	Supreme Court only. It does not include New York City Civil Court, small claims, housing court, or the 1,174 town and village courts.	not running yet

"Configured" means a collector is set up for that source. It changes to "running" here only once that source has actually finished a successful run, and it says "not running yet" until one has. Once you have an account, the same table inside the app shows the date each source last finished a run and flags any that is overdue.

Not covered — read this part

W.D.N.Y. (U.S. District Court) — this court publishes no public docket feed. District cases filed in Western New York are not watched. Its bankruptcy court is covered, and is in the table above.
New York City Civil Court, including small claims and housing court. A large share of consumer-debt and landlord matters live here and we do not read it.
New York's 1,174 town and village courts. No online record of these exists anywhere, for anyone, at any price. This is a permanent gap, not a roadmap item.
New Jersey state courts. The Judiciary's notice of 19 March 2024 revokes all system access for any user automating it, so we do not touch njcourts.gov. New Jersey coverage today is the two federal courts named above and nothing else.
Cases served the old way. Personal delivery, a sheriff at your door, or mail sent straight to your office produce no feed entry at the moment of service. We see the case when it reaches a docket we read, if it reaches one.
Companies named behind "et al". Most complaint captions name only the first party on each side — in a one-day sample of S.D.N.Y. filings, 25 of 34 ended in "et al". If your company is the fourth defendant, the caption we read may not contain its name.
The New Jersey address check. The state's free search does not publish the registered agent address, so the address comparison is New York only.

We do not promise how fast an alert arrives or that a filing will be found. What we will do is print what runs, when it last ran, and what it does not see — on this page and inside your account.

Pricing

Priced by state, because that is what it costs us

One pull of a court's new filings serves one customer or ten thousand identically. Your tenth company in the same state costs us nothing extra; a second state is a second integration. So the price follows states, not companies — and it is one annual invoice for the whole portfolio, never one per company.

$99

per year

Single
One company, in one state.

A second company is an upgrade to the portfolio plan, not an add-on.

$499

per year

Portfolio
Up to 25 companies, in one state.
$25 a year for each company beyond 25.

Twenty companies cost $499, not $1,000.

+$199

per year, per state

Additional state
Added to either plan. Coverage for a new state starts the day you add it.

Added mid-year, it is prorated to your renewal date.

What is free, and stays free

Creating an account.
Adding the companies you own and picking them out of the state register.
Reading back the service-of-process address the state holds.
Re-running that address check yourself, as often as you like, whether or not you ever buy a plan.

Court watching is the part that needs a plan, and it begins the day the plan starts — not the day you added the company.

The terms, in the open

Our liability is capped at the fees you paid us.
Consequential damages are excluded.
Claims must be brought within one year.
We are not your registered agent, and we do not accept service for you.
We do not give legal advice and nothing we send is advice.

There is no pay-out promise attached to being sued. A product that pays you when a fortuitous event happens is insurance, and we are not an insurer.

Start with the free half

Add a company, pick it out of your state's own register, and see the address a lawsuit would be mailed to. No card, and no court data needed to answer that question.

Check my company — free, no card Sign in

DocketEye is not a law firm, not a registered agent, and not a consumer reporting agency. You may only add companies you own or control.